The Problems with 'Stop Kony'

Joseph Kony is an awful human being, and thanks to the charity Invisible Children, you may already know that by now. The filmmaking organization/charity has single-handedly created a wildly viral documentary, KONY 2012, which has garnered over 26 million views since Monday, March 5, become a trending hashtag on Twitter, and landed on the Today show.

He stands accused of overseeing the systematic kidnapping of countless African children; brainwashing the boys into fighting for him, turning the girls into sex slaves and killing those who don't comply. His forces are believed to have slaughtered tens of thousands of people and are known for hacking the lips off their victims. Kony has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2005 on charges that include crimes against humanity. He has been living in the bush outside of Uganda since that time.

Whoa. This man needs to be stopped. #stopkony is a good thing! Let's get Kony!

Not so fast. It's not a matter of being pro-Kony or anti-Kony. No one is actually pro-Kony in all of this (save for some of Kony's cronies). But there's the matter of him being Ugandan, this being an international human rights type of deal, etc.-- all of which makes it very difficult for individuals like your or me to accomplish something on our own.

Oh.

Which is why the charity Invisible Children started #StopKony/KONY 2012 in the first place--to, in their words, raise awareness. They're a filmmaking company. Check out this video which they uploaded earlier this week. Did we mention the 26 million views on YouTube alone?

That's great. Go Invisible Children, go!

Again, it's not that easy. One of the big problems is that these guys...

So yeah, they kinda look like floppy-haired hipsters/surfer dudesbros. What's the real problem?

Well, it's their financials. AsVice's Alex Miller reported this is what their tax forms look like, and it's been circulating the internet:

And there's also the Cayman Islands bank account here:

How'd they get so much money?

Well, Oprah did give them $2 million.

Well, all right. That's a lot of money, lots of revenue and a lot of expenses. Don't most companies have that? And a Cayman Islands bank account isn't that nefarious... Mitt Romney has one! And if they're good enough for Oprah, they must be pretty great guys.

Yeah, for the most part. And it's super difficult to tell exactly what numbers mean because numbers, like statistics, are bendy like that. It's just that, well, look at these production costs:

And The Guardianreports that Invisible Children supports the Ugandan Army. That isn't good, because they also do plenty of bad things (arrests, torture, killings, etc.), says an expert at Human Rights Watch Africa.

Well, that's up to you. The biggest criticism here isn't unlike what faced the Komen foundation earlier this year. It's a charity, it wants to do good things, but people are upset where the money is going and in this case, not knowing where all of the money is going. They also question if filmmaking is the best way to go about getting this done.

On the other hand, so many more people know about Kony than they did before, which is what they wanted and completely accomplished right?

It's up to you, but if you want to donate to Invisible Children, head over here.